I know that the dictum to keep politics off of HN has been a dead letter for some time- especially since tech has become overtly non-apolitical in the last few years- but it's still funny to see pg himself breaking that rule.
The Two Kinds of Moderate
111–120 of 382 posts
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#112Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation. >The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distri…
This is not accurate. Yes, many election systems result in more parties than FPTP. But left and right still have salience within those. In fact, you can look at how each politician votes (without explicitly coding votes as left or right). This itself forms a space equal to the number of votes taken. But that vote space can be projected into a much lower dimensional space that captures most of the information about th…
DW-NOMINATE was developed by US political scientists to study the US House and Senate. Higher dimensionality is present internationally, and I believe that attempting to reduce those dynamics to a left/right spectrum limits our understanding of politics.
>Poole and Rosenthal note in Chapter 11 of Ideology and Congress that most of these analyses produce the finding that roll call voting is organized by only few dimensions (usually two): "These findings suggest that the need to form parliamentary majorities limits dimensionality."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_%28scaling_method%29
Static parliamentary majorities are not necessary in a presidential system.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#113> Intentional moderates are similar to those on the far left and the far right in that their opinions are, in a sense, not their own. The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk. Well, no, not at all. People on the left and on the right tend to have a worldview and attitude that is the foundation of their stances on issues. It is not a coincidence that…
Ideologies are more multipolar than that.
Oh I'm well aware :-)
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#114> For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left. Or perhaps that they are more confident, or more resigned, or simply more disorganized. I just don't know.
This is a typical complaint by the so called moderates who feel unappreciated by the left (whatever that is). But I yet to see an example of the far left who has any meaningful policy impact. All I see is a lot of whining about college campuses. Perhaps the far left in the US political landscape is Bernie who by most measures would be a moderate in other industrial nations. I don't know, but I have a hard time following what PG is trying to say here.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#115I know that the dictum to keep politics off of HN has been a dead letter for some time- especially since tech has become overtly non-apolitical in the last few years- but it's still funny to see pg himself breaking that rule.
How is he breaking it?
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#116Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation. >The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distri…
This is not accurate. Yes, many election systems result in more parties than FPTP. But left and right still have salience within those. In fact, you can look at how each politician votes (without explicitly coding votes as left or right). This itself forms a space equal to the number of votes taken. But that vote space can be projected into a much lower dimensional space that captures most of the information about th…
I think this 2D representation is definitely better. The two axes are Social (Authoritarian -> Libertarian) and Economic (Left -> Right)
https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#117Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any signifi…
I always assume most people hold moderate viewpoints and the people with extreme viewpoints just tend to be the loudest. At least that seems to be the case with most people I meet anyway.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#118Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any signifi…
My takeaway from this comment is that you didn't really read what he wrote. An accidental moderate, by his definition, could hold zero moderate opinions. E.g. it is possible all of their opinions are 0 or 100 on a left/right spectrum. It requires courage because they cannot join any tribe, because enough of those opinions would be heretical to a given tribe to prevent acceptance.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Increased focus on racial and sexual minorities to the exclusion of working-class interests Are these actually in conflict? Are they also not part of the working class? What sort of policies do you think should have been enacted against this?
There's only so much time, attention, and energy. If your focus is on, say, trans rights, you're not spending that time focusing on working-class economics. And even if you can do it all, there's only so much attention the voters have. If all they hear about you is on trans rights, they don't perceive you doing anything about their economic problems. The Democrats' central message used to be "we care about the workin…
Are you saying that as the Democrats became distanced from working-class issues, the republicans got closer to working-class issues?
Could you explain that in terms of the policy that they adopted or is it a response to Dems adopting minority rights issues?
What I mean to say is that if they are both bad in the same way on working class issues, what is it about minority rights that would make you vote R?
Genuinely trying to understand here...not trolling.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#120Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any signifi…
Agreed. People with extreme viewpoints (in either direction, whether you want to abolish private property or create a white ethno-state) face a lot of social sanction -- and very often financial penalties -- from the vast majority of people who just want to keep propping this status quo. Holding onto those extreme views risks losing a lot more than the extremely well-represented and appreciated middle.
As for a pithy thinkpiece about successful people writing outside their expertise, someone already did, nearly 15 years ago...